Quite enjoyed J. Maarten Troost's The Sex Lives of Cannibals which takes place on the island of Kiribati. A great beach book.
It's interesting to hear the government making a commitment like this. As the article has the president saying: "One million is 1+1+1 and so on. Every person and every action is important." Too often forgotten methinks. The cynic in me is losing out today; facing extinction of their islands, I can hope enough that they're sincere, and they others will listen.
I thought trademarks were related to the possibility of accidental confusion. If Murdoch thinks the average person will confuse BSkyB and Skype, he must have the most horrendous opinion of the average person!
I have a really hard time coming up with good arguments against open access publishing. Do they exist? Or are all arguments against flat out support of the publishers' business model?
I really really want to believe in Carbon Sequestration, but it just screams bullshit to me. Can anyone point me to analyses of it? Maybe even one or two where it's not bullshit?
All I want for christmas is the Residual (http://www.scummvm.org/subprojects.php) engine to get full time development status so that I can finally finish Grim Fandango.
The FSF are the fundamentalists of the software world, in all fashions.
Read the rationale for this: "Developing nonfree software is not good for society, and we have no obligation to make it easier." No mention of the possibility that developers may be able to decide on their own.
Well, the point he made about the new taskbar being "better", though "cribbed from cupertino".... I find that the ultimate hilarity. the one thing most people I know who use OS X _dislike_ is the dock. Myself included (though, I find pinning the dock to be significantly better, and that's basically done by default I think in 7. (to pin: defaults write com.apple.dock pinning -string start) )
Of course, it's too bad what you say about compilers... really, that's where my interest lies. I guess I'll just have to make my own way there. Of course, my interest in compilers is optimizations not the standard parser -> IL -> machine code route (which, yes, is easily outsourced).
Yeah, the attitude in here that CS == Coding seems to be quite.... backwards at least from my POV. Of course, my POV is that a CS Degree is about computation, Software Eng is the coding, and IT is the Enterprise putting components together.
I feel bad. I've been so conditioned by university text book prices that I no longer blink at books that cost that much. Of course, it means I don't buy books anymore.... but I don't blink.
I'm really waiting for the textbook publishers to get on the Ebook train so I can justify a 600$ ebook reader. Would make my life much easier.
My problem with the GoF book is that the "patterns" feel like someone is adding a terminology to something that doesn't really need it. It feels... over engineered to talk about patterns. Yes, there is useful information in there, and most likely everyone who does programming should read it / learn about design patterns, but I loathe the types of discussion that come from design patterns.
It's a dichotomy if you conflate the practice of creating programs for a user with creating programs to solve problems.
The kind of programming Dijkstra is talking about is solving mathematical problems like finding the shortest path, etc. Not programming in the sense of providing a neat visualization of the path a packet takes between routers.
There is some overlap, yes, but I think that the distinction between CS (what Dijkstra is talking about) and Software Engineering is that CS is about creating the algorithm to find a result. Implementation is detail after the algorithm is created, and is independent of language, and so it makes sense to teach a provable non-language rather than a language like C,Java,Perl,C++,Smalltalk etc.
The reason people don't like what he says however is mostly because of the lack of differentiation between software engineering and CS in most schools. They think of a degree as a practical piece of paper for a job, not as being taught an entirely different way of thinking. In this case CS degrees are teaching things that are really beyond its ken.
As near as I can tell, most of what's being done in SquirrelFish, V8, etc is not new; Most of it was pioneered in the Java JITs. It's just interesting to see this applied to other languages
I really am loving this JS engine war; I don't program JavaScript, and know nothing about JIT, but having read more than my fair share of compiler optimization and analysis papers, it's really good to see that compiler tech and research is alive and kicking.
I'm very surprised to find out that Bioshock on steam still has secure rom. That's a bit of a black eye on the so far almost flawless platform. Steam for me is the only real stop worth considering for games for me. It's gotten to the point with me that I wish boxed copies of game from publishers on steam would include a steam activation code so I could just steam tbe bloody games I buy boxed.
Slashdot Mirror
*islands. Islands. Plural. Many islands.
Quite enjoyed J. Maarten Troost's The Sex Lives of Cannibals which takes place on the island of Kiribati. A great beach book.
It's interesting to hear the government making a commitment like this. As the article has the president saying: "One million is 1+1+1 and so on. Every person and every action is important." Too often forgotten methinks. The cynic in me is losing out today; facing extinction of their islands, I can hope enough that they're sincere, and they others will listen.
Haha. Indeed. Almost certainly significantly cheaper than your average satellite, while giving a flexibility not available in satellites.
Out of curiosity, is 60,000 feet high enough to avoid commercial airliner traffic? IE, would these things need to hook into Air Traffic Control?
I thought trademarks were related to the possibility of accidental confusion. If Murdoch thinks the average person will confuse BSkyB and Skype, he must have the most horrendous opinion of the average person!
Nope; Obfuscation isn't enough. Specialized parsers measuring similarity exist:
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/1998/02/10464
While you can't catch everyone, disguise is not enough. (And not a measure of skill either).
I have a really hard time coming up with good arguments against open access publishing. Do they exist? Or are all arguments against flat out support of the publishers' business model?
I really really want to believe in Carbon Sequestration, but it just screams bullshit to me. Can anyone point me to analyses of it? Maybe even one or two where it's not bullshit?
All I want for christmas is the Residual (http://www.scummvm.org/subprojects.php) engine to get full time development status so that I can finally finish Grim Fandango.
The FSF are the fundamentalists of the software world, in all fashions.
Read the rationale for this: "Developing nonfree software is not good for society, and we have no obligation to make it easier." No mention of the possibility that developers may be able to decide on their own.
Well, the point he made about the new taskbar being "better", though "cribbed from cupertino".... I find that the ultimate hilarity. the one thing most people I know who use OS X _dislike_ is the dock. Myself included (though, I find pinning the dock to be significantly better, and that's basically done by default I think in 7. (to pin: defaults write com.apple.dock pinning -string start) )
Of course, it's too bad what you say about compilers... really, that's where my interest lies. I guess I'll just have to make my own way there. Of course, my interest in compilers is optimizations not the standard parser -> IL -> machine code route (which, yes, is easily outsourced).
I wish I had mod points; Easily the best comment in the discussion.
Yeah, the attitude in here that CS == Coding seems to be quite.... backwards at least from my POV. Of course, my POV is that a CS Degree is about computation, Software Eng is the coding, and IT is the Enterprise putting components together.
Yup. Shitty copy writing, but a non-story.
I feel bad. I've been so conditioned by university text book prices that I no longer blink at books that cost that much. Of course, it means I don't buy books anymore.... but I don't blink.
I'm really waiting for the textbook publishers to get on the Ebook train so I can justify a 600$ ebook reader. Would make my life much easier.
My problem with the GoF book is that the "patterns" feel like someone is adding a terminology to something that doesn't really need it. It feels... over engineered to talk about patterns. Yes, there is useful information in there, and most likely everyone who does programming should read it / learn about design patterns, but I loathe the types of discussion that come from design patterns.
Well, I thought, hey, what's the hurry, I'll just watch on CBC.
Not any more; Screw it. I'll do what I've historically done with Torchwood: I'll watch it a day after the brits do.
It's a dichotomy if you conflate the practice of creating programs for a user with creating programs to solve problems.
The kind of programming Dijkstra is talking about is solving mathematical problems like finding the shortest path, etc. Not programming in the sense of providing a neat visualization of the path a packet takes between routers.
There is some overlap, yes, but I think that the distinction between CS (what Dijkstra is talking about) and Software Engineering is that CS is about creating the algorithm to find a result. Implementation is detail after the algorithm is created, and is independent of language, and so it makes sense to teach a provable non-language rather than a language like C,Java,Perl,C++,Smalltalk etc.
The reason people don't like what he says however is mostly because of the lack of differentiation between software engineering and CS in most schools. They think of a degree as a practical piece of paper for a job, not as being taught an entirely different way of thinking. In this case CS degrees are teaching things that are really beyond its ken.
As near as I can tell, most of what's being done in SquirrelFish, V8, etc is not new; Most of it was pioneered in the Java JITs. It's just interesting to see this applied to other languages
I really am loving this JS engine war; I don't program JavaScript, and know nothing about JIT, but having read more than my fair share of compiler optimization and analysis papers, it's really good to see that compiler tech and research is alive and kicking.
WTF. Funny? insightful, informative, but funny? WTF mods.
On leopard, with iClip, iclip crashed, then the whole thing locked.
I'm very surprised to find out that Bioshock on steam still has secure rom. That's a bit of a black eye on the so far almost flawless platform. Steam for me is the only real stop worth considering for games for me. It's gotten to the point with me that I wish boxed copies of game from publishers on steam would include a steam activation code so I could just steam tbe bloody games I buy boxed.
serial number to go along with it.
It's your credit card.
Yeah... the footprints... duh?